Premier Wynne Vows to Fight Ford's Rollback of $15 Minimum Wage

TORONTO — Today Premier Kathleen Wynne was joined by Minister of Labour Kevin Flynn at the Mad Mexican Restaurant in Toronto to showcase the Ontario Liberal plan to support a $15 minimum wage and fight Doug Ford’s race-to-the-bottom campaign to attack workers’ pay and rights.

Ford has boasted that he will once again make Ontario ‘Open For Business’ but his policies will leave us closed to progress. Ford is pledging to strip away the scheduled minimum wage hike and undo critical worker protections such as expanded emergency leave and equal pay for work of equal value for part-time and casual workers.

Since the minimum wage was increased to $14 per hour on January 1, 2018 Ontario has generated 35,600 new jobs, defying critics who predicted disaster and demonstrating that when you put more money in the pockets of those at the lowest end of the wage scale, it gives both workers and our entire economy a boost. Doug Ford’s scheme would wipe out all these gains, rob workers of a needed hike in their take-home pay and force Ontario into a race to the bottom with low-wage, anti-labour economies.

The Premier emphasized her commitment to workers and small business by building on the Ontario Way of Business that has seen us build one of the best-performing economies in the world in recent years. In addition to the minimum wage, that approach to creating good jobs and strong growth includes:

Lowering the small business tax rate and holding corporate taxes at competitive levels

Standing up south of the border for our workers in trade disputes

Leading international trade missions to find new markets for Ontario businesses

Strategically partnering with businesses to help them expand and create good jobs

Publicly funding tuition for hundreds of thousands of college and university students

Building new child care spaces and making child care more affordable

The Ontario Liberal plan for jobs and growth has led to the creation of one million new jobs and the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 20 years. To ensure everyone is benefiting from our growing economy, Ontario Liberals have taken action including raising the minimum wage to $14 an hour in 2018 and to $15 an hour in 2019, followed by annual increases to keep up with the cost of living.

The Doug Ford Conservatives would also cut billons from the services people depend on while rewarding the rich with unnecessary corporate tax cuts that will do nothing to grow our economy. The only believable thing Ford has said in this election is that he would never raise the minimum wage. But when he says his tax cut for people earning less than $30,000 a year will leave minimum wage earners better off, Doug Ford is once again resorting to dishonest sloganeering—misleading the very people he claims to be for. Under Ford’s scheme, a full-time minimum wage earner would take home $700 less each year than if the minimum wage were increased from $14 to $15.

Only the Ontario Liberals have a plan that supports a growing economy and stands up for the fair pay that every worker in Ontario deserves. The Liberal plan expands publicly funded prescription drugs to one-in-two people in Ontario, makes the largest mental health care investment in Canadian history, builds a record amount of transit, boosts hospital funding, helps more people go to college or university with publicly funded tuition and lets more parents go back to work by funding preschool child care from 2 ½ to kindergarten. Ontario’s economy is growing stronger, but that growth and the care and services it funds are at risk this election.

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“Doug Ford thinks he can build a strong economy by taking cash out of the pockets of our lowest-paid workers and cutting taxes for his wealthy friends. Our plan will boost pay for those making the minimum wage and expand protections for workers across Ontario.”

—Premier Kathleen Wynne

“We know that people expect a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. It’s why we raised the minimum wage this year and it’s why we’ll do it again in 2019. Doug Ford’s tax ploy for minimum wage workers will leave them and their families worse off, despite the slick sales tactics he uses to try to convince them otherwise.”